Under this, Below Poverty Line (BPL) rural youths are imparted specialised vocational training and provided jobs in the private sector.

Under the project, the Union rural development ministry provides 75 per cent of funds to the Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Dr Reddy's Laboratories. The rest 25 per cent is shared by the Foundation, which is the technical and implementation partner in this public-private partnership project.

The State Rural Development department extends all necessary logistics to the Foundation, like helping it identify and select BPL youths and find jobs for them after imparting vocational training.

“In the first phase launched over two years ago, as many as 5,056 BPL youths from rural areas across Gujarat were imparted specialised training in different vocations and given placement in private sector companies under this project.

They are getting a monthly salary ranging between Rs 3,000 and Rs 7,000. Most of them, mainly from Ahmedabad, Kheda and Jamnagar, have barely managed high school-level education,” Additional Commissioner (Rural Development) R R Solanki told Newsline.

Solanki said it plans to cover another 5,000 youths in the second phase, which is expected to be launched sometime next month. “We have already initiated the process of identifying the beneficiaries for this. This time we plan to target mainly tribal youths in the state ,” he said.

Under the programme, District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) officials help representatives of Dr Reddy's Foundation to scout rural areas and identify BPL youths.

The selected youths then give an Interest Inventory test, which has about 50-60 objective questions. After this exercise, they are imparted short-term vocational training of four to 20 weeks in different areas, such as nursing, hospitality, tourism, customer relations and sales, automobile and IT-Enabled Services.

After the training, the implementing authorities issue certificates of merits to them and also help them find suitable jobs in these sectors.

The amount of about Rs 20 crore was spent in the first phase, while an expenditure of Rs 15 crore is expected to be incurred for the second phase. This time, most of the prospective 5,000 candidates will be selected from tribal-dominated districts of Surat, Bharuch, Valsad, Panchmahals and Vadodara, according to a senior Rural Development official.